Overpowered Classes

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One thing that the Blade & Soul team (and apparently some of the player base) needs to realize is: Low health/defense --> DOES NOT!!!!!!!! EQUAL --> justification for ludicrously high AP AND/OR utility (utility meaning iFrame, mobility, and/or CC skills). Now, it should not be my or anybody else's job as a PLAYER to have to school the COMPANY!!!!! on why their game is broken... but, this has been going on for months now and nothing has changed.

Imbalance, in GENERAL, is fine for games, but this is not the right kind of imbalance for Blade & Soul; just slapping a class together with low health but a fleet of defensive skills and the ability to one-shot (or nearly one-shot, or one-combo/nearly one-combo) a player without giving them a way to escape/avoid the one-shot/one-combo/etc.: is... bad... game design.

As James from the Extra Credits video titled Perfect Imbalance - Why Unbalanced Design Creates Balanced Play - Extra Credits says: "You need to give players a wide enough pool of options that they can find an answer to whatever you're gonna throw at them..." And in a game where we can't just swap classes on the fly to deal with a specific threat, there NEEDS to be a different approach to your perfect imbalance that you're trying to achieve, Game Company.

...If I REALLY have to do ANY MORE research than what I've already done simply for credibility (which was already ridiculous because this stuff HOPEFULLY should be common sense) then I will. I'll look into specific alternatives to low-health-high-damage classes, etc. But I pray to whoever/whatever people believe in that this is enough and that the developers will look into this mess they've made.

Actually, here... buffs are usually better than nerfs (Core-A Gaming), so here's a suggestion right now: Give every player a boosted iFrame ability so we can counter the ridiculous burst damage/combos that some classes can do. Again though, it's not my job to figure this stuff out for a game company. The company will hopefully see this and work to introduce a balanced, fun/clever NERF, or a balancing, interesting BUFF.

(To any moderators that see this, with all due respect [ILY] please do not comment with vague responses like "We're always working to keep things balanced and fair," thank you. But of course feel free to reply with your input (join the discussion if you have time) or tell us that you're currently working on THIS specific issue.

(To any players reading this, please do not nit-pick my vocabulary. If you see for example an instance where I used the word "unavoidable" when it was clearly meant to say "inescapable," then don't try to debunk my whole argument based on one thing. You can tell me if I've made an error, and I'll correct it.)

(In case it's not obvious, I'm talking mostly about Gunners in their current state as of 2/14/2018, but I'm also talking about assassins (with their one-hit or nearly one-hit unescapable bomb), summoners (with their unstoppable spam and bountiful amounts of utility, which isn't justified by the amount of damage they can do), and WL's (with their one-combo or nearly one-combo unescapable air barrage.)

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I definitely agree with all of what you said. I think gunners, blade dancers, destroyers, summoner's cat grab, assassin, kfm and warlock all need a rework. They are literally invinsible in 6v6 cause they can perma resist, stealth, spin and deflect, grab, one shot, untabbable aeriel etc... all of these classes are NCSoft's favourites which they buffed too much too many times and need to be nerfed so that it would require skills to play them well. At the moment only FM is a balanced class that actually requires good cd management and skill. The rest are broken.

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I definitely agree with all of what you said. I think gunners, blade dancers, destroyers, summoner's cat grab, assassin, kfm and warlock all need a rework. They are literally invinsible in 6v6 cause they can perma resist, stealth, spin and deflect, grab, one shot, untabbable aeriel etc... all of these classes are NCSoft's favourites which they buffed too much too many times and need to be nerfed so that it would require skills to play them well. At the moment only FM is a balanced class that actually requires good cd management and skill. The rest are broken.

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I definitely agree with all of what you said. I think gunners, blade dancers, destroyers, summoner's cat grab, assassin, kfm and warlock all need a rework. They are literally invinsible in 6v6 cause they can perma resist, stealth, spin and deflect, grab, one shot, untabbable aeriel etc... all of these classes are NCSoft's favourites which they buffed too much too many times and need to be nerfed so that it would require skills to play them well. At the moment only FM is a balanced class that actually requires good cd management and skill. The rest are broken.

Did........did you just say KFM is broken but force master is balanced? You're either trolling, really don't understand pvp or blissfully negligent. No one with any amount of recognizable skill will even remotely agree with you. As far as BROKEN is concerned WL and GUNNER need the most looks. As far as overpowered is concerned force master is number one on that list, followed by assassin and a few others. KFM is only considered OP or broken to REAAAAALLLLLY bad people and i'm backed in my statements by top players who compete and win at tournaments. Learn to FM because you're nearly invincible at max gear, can wall bang, heal, disable approach moves, knock back indefinitely, two tabs, phantom grab, two ice shields and can stall.....multiple opponents....on a game breaking level. Force master walks a VERY THIN line between broken and overpowered.

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Did........did you just say KFM is broken but force master is balanced? You're either trolling, really don't understand pvp or blissfully negligent. No one with any amount of recognizable skill will even remotely agree with you. As far as BROKEN is concerned WL and GUNNER need the most looks. As far as overpowered is concerned force master is number one on that list, followed by assassin and a few others. KFM is only considered OP or broken to REAAAAALLLLLY bad people and i'm backed in my statements by top players who compete and win at tournaments. Learn to FM because you're nearly invincible at max gear, can wall bang, heal, disable approach moves, knock back indefinitely, two tabs, phantom grab, two ice shields and can stall.....multiple opponents....on a game breaking level. Force master walks a VERY THIN line between broken and overpowered.

YOu mean kfms infinite counter/resist/stun isnt broken? I've seen people with Dforge/ascendent 5v1 a single kfm, its absurd. All classes are broken, but i WILL argue that fm is one of the least broken classes, and thats the only class i refuse to play. Fms are easy to block, easy to hit, easy to escape from, do little damage unless they have vt mb, in which case all classes are broken.

Kfms - can block any and everything. Have an absurdly low cd on q and e. Can pull enemies in and just grand slam them. Or if you're too noob, just hold down counter. You'll at elast get in silver.
Shadowlock arguably needs a relook. maestro definitely needs to have something done. Their attack shouldnt be high hitting AND defense penetration. Summoners, only thing that needs working is that broken macro, which is against the ToS. BDs, same really. Destros, need a look at their q. Infinite focus regain+daze+unblockable+high damage. Not to mention fury cd. SFs, eh, about as many resists as kfm but not as bad. Sins are one shot wonders. Perma stealth and absurd damage is too much. At the very least make em targetable to a degree.

But as far as fms go, as a wl i just hold down 1 and ruin em. Let me correct myself, as a frostlock, i can ruin them. The slwoest and worst pvp class in the game. Not sure where you get broken from

as an added bonus, idk how much the darkstorm effect does but i assume it makes frostlock powerful as ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤, so maybe the defense penetration dcall could do less damage

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they should reduce the cost to upgrade PvP weapons and accessories by like 90% and change them to PvP-Attack power only, and remove the 10-win achievement requirement from buying PvP Soul Shields.

Forcing players to farm and grind for a year and upgrade worthless items before you're even viable against others and to have a chance is just silly and brings no fun.

I realy would like to play some interesting battles in your battle grounds, but there is absolutely no point for me to do so, everyone who does 6vs6 is miles ahead, i get one hit by others, i deal no damage to others, there is no balance.

Or give us normalized battle grounds where everyone has the same stats as in Arena, maybe for Zen-Beans only Instead of Battle-Points, so players can at least finish their 3-win quests in a reasonable way.

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A lot of you seemed to latch onto the idea that I was SOLELY talking about 6V6, and while that was a large part of my argument: getting unescapably air-combo'd (for lots of damage) by a warlock in PVP arena is just as unacceptable as getting unescapably air-combo'd in 6V6 (especially due to the low cooldown and easy execution), or bursted by Gunner, or Locked by KFM/FM etc. All of the classes that I mentioned are unbalanced in PVP Arena AND battlegrounds. Now, in an effort to address some of what someone said:

HateMe says: “Cat grab has 24s cooldown and you can eacape from it. Stealth only triggers of you hit the summoner while he is countering ( thats your own fault if you just mash spam your buttons and dont look).”

Summoner: has too much damage per-attack for the amount of spam-ability they possess; an unacceptable amount of CC considering they can activate most of them while they’re on the ground, and of course the cat's grab becomes more powerful due to the high volumes of CC; and they pose too much of a threat in this kind of game - based partly on the damage and CC previously mentioned, but also based on their block (which I'll get to) and (still coinciding with the block) the amount of self-repeating moves some classes have (think Soul Shackle or any other AOE that procs multiple times on its own) - to reasonably use the “it’s the player’s fault for hitting the counter“ excuse. Summoner's counter is 1.) too powerful in this game for the short cooldown, and 2.) a lazy reuse of a skill (invisibility) that Assassin should only really have. It needs to be reworked entirely.

This is just one example of my thoughts on ONE class. Does this mean that summoner should be NERFED? Not necessarily… Remember, buffs are often better than nerfs. I mentioned the possibility of a buff to classes’ iFrames, now I’ll add on another suggestion: Perhaps give some classes more moves that naturally Pierce defense (simply add the subtext “defense piercing” to more moves). This would discourage the boring holding of 1 (by WL) or spam of counter by KFMs, blade masters, and perhaps summoners, and it would ENcourage more interesting, engaging, risky gameplay by the player base.

Remember, I'm not saying these things MUST happen. They are merely suggestions that I’ve thought up. If you see a flaw in something that I’m saying, point it out but don’t leave it at that, write your own suggestion for change or improvement afterward, that way we keep this discussion productive.

The rest of you covered some topics of interest, and you seemed to hit both sides of the argument (or just argued back-and-forth well), and I have carpal tunnel, so I won’t bother writing responses for those ones just now. But if somebody really wants further explanation or has further concerns for something, absolutely let me know and I will give you a logical earful.

(Helpful tip: Give us reasons as to why what you’re saying is true or helpful, that way we have more information as a whole, we can believe what you're saying is true, and we can work together better at this.)

((I also saw a comment about reducing the cost of things. I feel like there's a more creative solution for that, but I'm just not sure what. Ideally, we want to make changes that steer the game toward being continually engaging, and not just entirely easy-peasy. I do like your idea as a possible solution to the Battlegrounds side of things, though! Maybe just some slight tweakage.))

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Hello, I'm here to remind you people that 6v6 is definately not pvp but PVE.

Thus, normalized BG wil never appear since its the only way whales gets to spend money and show off and feel powerful against other players.

To sum up, I just hope that :

- You'll learn that 6v6 is pve p2w

- Your post is sadly useless as you know it. Like 5 posts a day about the subject.

Like there isnt anything between equalized 6v6 and what we have now... gear can count, but make it only count only a bit in pvp.. then ur still stronger with gear but people wont be doing 300k damage per rmb..

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Did I just see someone mention gunner as being broken in pvp arena? Lol go play a gunner and see how well you do, not to mention they just received another huge nerf in KR. As far as 6v6 any class can be overpowered there with whale gear. Also the balancing of classes aren't determined by 6v6 (where gear matters) but by arena instead.

I think BM is literally the only class I don't hear constant whining about, and even, their block spamming still gets some hate.

Some classes are probably being complained about by people who are playing classes that have more difficulty than most with fighting said classes... that was a mouth-full. I mentioned this scenario in my initial post, saying basically that this is not the type of game (like Overwatch) where you can just swap characters super fast to counter a specific class; therefore, that sort of balancing system shouldn't exist in Blade & Soul.

A couple things to consider: some of the complaints that the community hears are probably 100% emotion-based, meaning that the person was simply angry when they complained, I.E. they had no solid, contemplated basis for their claim; or (like you say) it was a gear-based complaint, where they complained about a class being overpowered, but they really meant their gear stats were too high. Both of these types of complaints shouldn't be pooled together with the more thought-out ones because that's giving the community the impression that there is no real problem, when in fact: There may be.

I see a lot of people complaining about the fact that people are complaining, but they're not giving any specific reasons as to why players shouldn't complain. "Lol go play a gunner and see how well you do" (SalemK), is not sufficient evidence for why gunner is or isn't balanced in Arena. Instead, try doing something more like Enemy Silence did in his/her post, when they were speaking about Force Masters and how they're "nearly invincible at max gear, can wall bang, heal, disable approach moves, knock back indefinitely, two tabs, phantom grab, two ice shields and can stall..." and then Laura who tried to debunk that claim by giving examples of how "Fms are easy to block, easy to hit, easy to escape from, do little damage unless they have vt mb..."

These types of comments are progressive. Everyone from this post down should do their best to be AS SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE (so that we have a reason to believe you).

"Gunners are ridiculously overpowered DUE TO: [specific examples and explanations as to why gunner is/isn't overpowered]"

If you think posts like this are useless, then don't just say that, also state why, and keep on the topic by explaining how the classes - based on evidence - don't need changing (and consequently why posts like these are useless). If you think these posts are useless because you believe the Dev. Team won't change anything, well... that's a comment for a separate post. (And maybe link us to one so we can see it.)

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A lot of you seemed to latch onto the idea that I was SOLELY talking about 6V6, and while that was a large part of my argument: getting unescapably air-combo'd (for lots of damage) by a warlock in PVP arena is just as unacceptable as getting unescapably air-combo'd in 6V6 (especially due to the low cooldown and easy execution), or bursted by Gunner, or Locked by KFM/FM etc. All of the classes that I mentioned are unbalanced in PVP Arena AND battlegrounds. Now, in an effort to address some of what someone said:

HateMe says: “Cat grab has 24s cooldown and you can eacape from it. Stealth only triggers of you hit the summoner while he is countering ( thats your own fault if you just mash spam your buttons and dont look).”

Summoner: has too much damage per-attack for the amount of spam-ability they possess; an unacceptable amount of CC considering they can activate most of them while they’re on the ground, and of course the cat's grab becomes more powerful due to the high volumes of CC; and they pose too much of a threat in this kind of game - based partly on the damage and CC previously mentioned, but also based on their block (which I'll get to) and (still coinciding with the block) the amount of self-repeating moves some classes have (think necrotic chains or any other AOE that procs multiple times on its own) - to reasonably use the “it’s the player’s fault for hitting the counter“ excuse. Summoner's counter is 1.) too powerful in this game for the short cooldown, and 2.) a lazy reuse of a skill (invisibility) that Assassin should only really have. It needs to be reworked entirely.

Lets discuss summoner then and let me deconstruct your post:

1. Summoner in fact has the least damage in classes when it comes to PVP. Summoner is the only class that cant 100-0 you. Their damage is average, the damage only pikes up if certain conditions are met which depend on the oponent and if they know what they are doing.

Example?: Sunflower will do significantly more damage if you keep standing in nettles/briar patch, petal storm toss.

2. Summoner CC's are nearly completely useless in 6v6 simply because all the CC's are on the cat which literally dies in a few hits, once the cat is dead = no cc's, no resists, zip.

3. Necrotic AOE's - i assume you talk about the roots. Well here is a hint: learn how summoner plays and you will know the conditions it takes to decrease the cooldown on the AOE and which gears actually aloow the cooldown to be slightly reduced and the conditions for it and then start talking.

4. Counter - summoners counter is literally the only skill that can save them in a pitch, its the most essential skill a summoner has its not in any way overpowered. It triggers basically on the oponent being an idiot and spamming buttons, thats it.

For the summoner part you give points here which actually have nothing to do with balance but with the fact that you just dont know how to face them in a PVP match.

The way i see it you have no idea what you are talking about.

Truth be told, none of the classes is really "overpowered", there are some aspects which make it seem like it which should be looked at. for example:

Gunner: parry/ defense penetration on the hardest hitting attack - this causes a problem not the high damage they do.

KFM: imo the class has a bit too many resists, but you can still kill them.

FM: Too many freezes and infinite knockback / dash but still not a real big issue if you get a grip on it.

I wont even go into assasins because they actrually arent that hard to kill even with the perma stealth.

Most of the inbalance is from gear, then skill and the fact that literally only a very small group of people are actually being objective in these kind of topics. Everyone else is just crying nerf because they are bad at pvp and instead of learning and getting better they prefer to shout something is overpowered without even knowing anything because they cant handle it.

Are you gonna say KFM is overpowered in 1v1 equalized arena because you keep hitting their counter and they get their buffs off because you trigger it?

Edited February 16, 2018 by HateMe

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No, the main Problem is, that a PVP Weapon is pretty useless and wasted money against a player with Aransu weapon and VT-Badge, because he simply onehit you before your weapon takes effect. All this one hit ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ just came, because no one thought about the impact of elemental damage and PVE-Weapon / Gear stats to PVP on battleground.

So what is my Acendent 8 Weapon and PVP Soulshield usefull for, when everyone with Raven and VT Badge can onehit you even you have 190k life, 5k def and 3 k kritdef?

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1. Summoner in fact has the least damage in classes when it comes to PVP...

Example?: Sunflower will do significantly more damage if you keep standing in nettles/briar patch, petal storm toss.

2. Summoner CC's are nearly completely useless in 6v6 simply because all the CC's are on the cat which literally dies in a few hits...

3. Necrotic AOE's - i assume you talk about the roots...

4. Counter - summoners counter is literally the only skill that can save them in a pitch, its the most essential skill a summoner has its not in any way overpowered. It triggers basically on the oponent being an idiot and spamming buttons, thats it...

Are you gonna say KFM is overpowered in 1v1 equalized arena because you keep hitting their counter and they get their buffs off because you trigger it?

6

This is a sort of nit-picky class because it falls under the category of being a hard-counter to several different classes, but pretty average to other classes. I'll address what you said in the order you said them, then I'll get to some more specific things afterward if needed:

1. The amount of spam a summoner has is insanely high to the point where it's not possible for some classes to resist their moves for much more than a second (since most iFrames only defend against 5 or so instances of attack). If those classes are not able to resist a summoner (since their defense is spammed down so quickly), then there needs to be some sort of balance elsewhere, or else then they're essentially defenseless against all the CCs and/or debuffs that follow.

2. A cat has a large number of defense mechanisms (like crouching tiger), mobility moves (like swoosh, not to mention the sheer range of the cat - it can disrupt/slow down players from very far away even when the summoner is dead), and a fair amount of health. I've never seen a cat die in "a few hits" as you claim, and the CCs have certainly been used to their maximum (or near-maximum) potential any time I've seen them. If cats dying instantly is true from your perspective, as my statement is true from my perspective, then we'll either need more evidence or another claim from another player to come to a conclusion on this.

3. I made a mistake; I didn't mean necrotic chains. And I didn't necessarily mean the Summoner's AOEs. I'm talking about ALL the moves that each class has which remain active on their own for a period of time. Moves like Soul Shackle, Wing Storm, Thralls (which attack on their own), Firefall, Scorched Earth, Meteor Shower, Blazing Wall, and Multiple Blaze just to name a few that might proc a summoner's counter without the player having direct control over it. I also stated that the summoner is too large of a threat (with their spam and CCs) to allow the enemy NOT to use these sorts of moves (since they're often powerful moves needed to kill the summoner or sustain the user's life). When players can't use some of their fundamental moves to hurt the summoner due to the summoner's ability to simply go invisible and regain health, then there's not only a balance issue, but it's stripping certain moves away from the player, which in this case is a gameplay/fun issue.

4. Any of the summoner's numerous CCs (which can be activated from nearly any condition the summoner is in) could reasonably be counted as skills that can save the summoner in a pinch.

I won't say that the KFM is "overpowered" due to their counter, but I will say that it is frankly a boring mechanic. Having to wait for a KFM to stop their counter animation (or a BM to stop their block) takes away from engagement time. We're in a spam-blocking meta with certain classes that, like I mentioned, could (and perhaps should) be shaken up by introducing more defense piercing to already-existing moves.

Edited February 16, 2018 by Kasumi Rose

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This is a sort of nit-picky class because it falls under the category of being a hard-counter to several different classes, but pretty average to other classes. I'll address what you said in the order you said them, then I'll get to some more specific things afterward if needed:

1. The amount of spam a summoner has is insanely high to the point where it's not possible for some classes to resist their moves for much more than a second (since most iFrames only defend against 5 or so instances of attack). If those classes are not able to resist a summoner (since their defense is spammed down so quickly), then there needs to be some sort of balance elsewhere, or else then they're essentially defenseless against all the CCs and/or debuffs that follow.

2. A cat has a large number of defense mechanisms (like crouching tiger), mobility moves (like swoosh, not to mention the sheer range of the cat - it can disrupt/slow down players from very far away even when the summoner is dead), and a fair amount of health. I've never seen a cat die in "a few hits" as you claim, and the CCs have certainly been used to their maximum (or near-maximum) potential any time I've seen them. If cats dying instantly is true from your perspective, as my statement is true from my perspective, then we'll either need more evidence or another claim from another player to come to a conclusion on this.

3. I made a mistake; I didn't mean necrotic chains. And I didn't necessarily mean the Summoner's AOEs. I'm talking about ALL the moves that each class has which remain active on their own for a period of time. Moves like Soul Shackle, Wing Storm, Thralls (which attack on their own), Firefall, Scorched Earth, Meteor Shower, Blazing Wall, and Multiple Blaze just to name a few that might proc a summoner's counter without the player having direct control over it. I also stated that the summoner is too large of a threat (with their spam and CCs) to allow the enemy NOT to use these sorts of moves (since they're often powerful moves needed to kill the summoner or sustain the user's life). When players can't use some of their fundamental moves to hurt the summoner due to the summoner's ability to simply go invisible and regain health, then there's not only a balance issue, but it's stripping certain moves away from the player, which in this case is a gameplay/fun issue.

4. Any of the summoner's numerous CCs (which can be activated from nearly any condition the summoner is in) could reasonably be counted as skills that can save the summoner in a pinch.

I won't say that the KFM is "overpowered" due to their counter, but I will say that it is frankly a boring mechanic. Having to wait for a KFM to stop their counter animation (or a BM to stop their block) takes away from engagement time. We're in a spam-blocking meta with certain classes that, like I mentioned, could (and perhaps should) be shaken up by introducing more defense piercing to already-existing moves.

Here is the point tho:

Even with crouching tiger the cat gets literally bursted to death in 2-3 hits. So the cat is not an option to count as something that makes the summoner overpowered, not to mention you can literally get out of all its CC's since all other classes have at least 2-3 escape skills or skills preventing CC's like warlock / destroyer.

Summoner is not even a heavy counter to other classes, summoner is LITERALLY the worst class when it comes to 1v1 pvp in the higher ranks and the most easiest match up to any good PVP players. you call it summoner spam....well yeah they can spam sunflower for example but you would be really suprised how hard it is to dps dowqn people that know how to pvp.

The only reason summoner used to be so heavy targeted as unbalanced class was because ever since this game went live in NA a lot of people did not know how to counter them / fight them, that perception has drastically changed now. If you want to look at PVP balance look at the results of the last tournament in Korea and then make your opinions. And FYI: summoner itself literally has only 2 CC's: roots (which every class can get out of multiple times so makes this skill basically useless) and 1 daze or kd depending on spec, everything else is on the cat, cat dies = no CC's.

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Even with crouching tiger the cat gets literally bursted to death in 2-3 hits. So the cat is not an option to count as something that makes the summoner overpowered, not to mention you can literally get out of all its CC's since all other classes have at least 2-3 escape skills or skills preventing CC's like warlock / destroyer.

Which class has 3 escapes? From what I know, some classes have most 2 escapes only such as Sin, wl and fm. Majority of the classes only have 1 escape such as BD and BM.